Private employers hold back on hiring in May

[The Northerner]

WASHINGTON – A swell in temporary government hiring for the census drove almost all the job market's gains last month — a huge disappointment to Wall Street and a sign that private employers aren't yet confident enough in the recovery to start adding workers with gusto.

Daunted by the European debt crisis and a falling U.S. stock market at home, American businesses added just 41,000 jobs in May, the fewest since January. The government hired 10 times as many for the national census, but those positions will begin to disappear as summer arrives.

At least on paper, the 431,000 total new jobs was the biggest gain in a decade. The unemployment rate dipped to 9.7 percent from 9.9 percent, mainly because hundreds of thousands of people gave up searching for work and were no longer counted.

"On the surface, they look great," Joel Naroff, president of Naroff Economic Advisors, said of the numbers. "But that beauty was only skin-deep. The private sector is not out there hiring like crazy."

Wall Street interpreted the numbers as a big letdown, a sign that the recovery, if not derailed, is at least stalling. The Dow Jones industrial average sank from the opening bell and tumbled 323.31 points, its third worst slide of the year. The index closed below 10,000 for the second time in two weeks. All the major indexes were down more than 3 percent.

The new employment snapshot, released on Friday by the Labor Department, indicated that many private employers are still wary of bulking up their work forces. And it suggested the economic recovery may not bring help fast enough for millions of Americans still unemployed.

Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100605/ap_on_bi_go_ec_fi/us_economy

[Liberal_in_LA]

1. start hiring employers! People need jobs

[Better Today]

4. Hire them to do what? There's a horrible cyclical situation wherein

we've lost the bulk of middle class consumerism, because of the loss or fear of loss of employment combined with any number of personal/familial credit crises, so the employers have no reason nor need to hire more. I know many more small businesspersons right now just trying to justify keeping existing employees, or worst still shedding employees, than those that want more employees and are hesitant to hire.

I finally got lucky if you can call it that, and got a half way decent part time position, still won't get me out of financial/bankruptcy trouble, but it will give me a foundation to start over with. However, it was a replacement job due to an employee lying and not doing her job, not a new hire, and he's also trying to figure out how to keep the rest of his staff and fears he won't be able to if things don't pick up ASAP.

Unfortunately it really is going to take something akin to the New Deal, working primarily on infrastructure repair and upgrade, to get the middle class back on it's feet, back to buying, and therefore giving employers real reason to hire, not just for the sake of it.

[xchrom]

2. recommend

[xchrom]

3. did it again -- i have a new computer -- stop posting twice xchrom

it's annoying.

[bluestateguy]

5. I still stand by my idea of a mandatory hiring policy

that would order selected companies to create a certain number of jobs.

[Abq_Sarah]

6. You hire if you need employees

Period.